Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ Lyrics Entangle Two Rachels

[ed. The internet springs into action... and shoots itself in the foot.]

Minutes after Beyoncé released “Lemonade,” an album in which she touches on marital infidelity, fans in the Beyhive declared it a very bad evening for two people: her husband, Jay Z; and the mystery woman the singer fleetingly mentions as a mistress. Let’s call that poor soul Becky.

The lyric is embedded at the end of the song “Sorry,” and it goes like this: “He only want me when I’m not there. He better call Becky with the good hair.”

Soon after watching Beyoncé swing a bat at cars and set her surroundings on fire in the televised album viewing event, the Beyhive carried out the virtual equivalent of a car smashing against the reputation of the designer Rachel Roy, whose relationship with Jay Z had long been a matter of speculation.

It did not help that Ms. Roy alluded to her good hair in an Instagram post on Saturday night, the night the album was unveiled. “Good hair, don’t care,” she wrote. That was all the evidence the Beyhive needed to unleash its wrath.

But then it got stranger. The TV chef Rachael Ray was accidentally pulled into the fray — because of her similar name. (...)

The Beyhive largely reversed course after discovering that Ms. Ray, the Food Network fixture who prefers to go by “Rach,” was the victim of an unfortunate misspelling. But her Instagram page remains a smoldering wreckage of lemon and bee emojis. Ms. Roy was so inundated with comments that she set her own account to private. (...)

A couple of days later, the dust seems to be clearing. If you’re reading this, congratulations: You survived the rapture. And it looks as if Jay Z is going to be just fine: “Lemonade” is another high-profile delivery to his music service, Tidal, and his marriage appears to be intact.

by Katie Rogers, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Chad Batka